A Bit More Detail

• Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait notes that far-orbiting body 2015 TC387 offers more indirect evidence for Planet Nine, as does D-Brief.
  
• Centauri Dreams notes that data from the Gaia astrometrics satellite finds traces of past collisions between the Milky Way Galaxy and the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy.


• The Crux takes a look at the long history of human observation of the Crab Nebula.


• Sujata Gupta at JSTOR Daily writes about the struggle of modern agriculture with the pig, balancing off concerns for animal welfare with productivity.


• Language Hat shares a defensive of an apparently legendarily awful novel, Marguerite Young's Miss Macintosh, My Darling.


• Lingua Franca, at the Chronicle, takes a look at the controversy over the name of the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, going up to the recent referendum on North Macedonia.


• The LRB Blog reports on the high rate of fatal car accidents in the unrecognized republic of Abkhazia.


• Reddit's mapporn shares an interesting effort to try to determine the boundaries between different regions of Europe, stacking maps from different sources on top of each other.


• Justin Petrone at North! writes about how the northern wilderness of Estonia sits uncomfortably with his Mediterranean Catholic background.


• Peter Watts reports from a book fair he recently attended in Lviv, in the west of Ukraine.


• Jason Davis at the Planetary Society Blog notes the new effort being put in by NASA into the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.


• Roads and Kingdoms reports on some beer in a very obscure bar in Shanghai.


• Drew Rowsome reports on the performance artist Lukas Avendano, staging a performance in Toronto inspired by the Zapotech concept of the muxe gender.


• Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps examines the ocean-centric Spielhaus map projection that has recently gone viral.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel considers the question of whether or not the Big Rip could lead to another Big Bang.


• Window on Eurasia notes the harm that global warming will inflict on the infrastructures of northern Siberia.


• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell considers the ecological fallacy in connection with electoral politics. Sometimes there really are not niches for new groups.


• Arnold Zwicky takes part in the #BadStockPhotosOfMyJob meme, this time looking at images of linguists.

• Anthrodendum considers the issue of the security, or not, of cloud data storage used by anthropologists.


• Architectuul takes a look at the very complex history of urban planning and architecture in the city of Skopje, linked to issues of disaster and identity.


• Centauri Dreams features an essay by Ioannis Kokkidinis, examining the nature of the lunar settlement of Artemis in Andy Weir's novel of the same. What is it?


• Crux notes the possibility that human organs for transplant might one day soon be grown to order.


• D-Brief notes evidence that extrasolar visitor 'Oumuamua is actually more like a comet than an asteroid.


• Bruce Dorminey makes the sensible argument that plans for colonizing Mars have to wait until we save Earth. (I myself have always thought the sort of environmental engineering necessary for Mars would be developed from techniques used on Earth.)


• The Everyday Sociology Blog took an interesting look at the relationship between hobbies and work.


• Far Outliers looks at how, in the belle époque, different European empires took different attitudes towards the emigration of their subjects depending on their ethnicity. (Russia was happy to be rid of Jews, while Hungary encouraged non-Magyars to leave.)


• The Finger Post shares some photos taken by the author on a trip to the city of Granada, in Nicaragua.


• The Frailest Thing's L.M. Sacasas makes an interesting argument as to the extent to which modern technology creates a new sense of self-consciousness in individuals.


• Inkfish suggests that the bowhead whale has a more impressive repertoire of music--of song, at least--than the fabled humpback.


• Information is Beautiful has a wonderful illustration of the Drake Equation.


• JSTOR Daily takes a look at the American women who tried to prevent the Trail of Tears.


• Language Hat takes a look at the diversity of Slovene dialects, this diversity perhaps reflecting the stability of the Slovene-inhabited territories over centuries.


• Language Log considers the future of the Cantonese language in Hong Kong, faced with pressure from China.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes how negatively disruptive a withdrawal of American forces from Germany would be for the United States and its position in the world.


• Lingua Franca, at the Chronicle, notes the usefulness of the term "Latinx".


• The LRB Blog reports on the restoration of a late 19th century Japanese-style garden in Britain.


• The New APPS Blog considers the ways in which Facebook, through the power of big data, can help commodify personal likes.


• Neuroskeptic reports on the use of ayahusasca as an anti-depressant. Can it work?


• Justin Petrone, attending a Nordic scientific conference in Iceland to which Estonia was invited, talks about the frontiers of Nordic identity.


• Personal Reflections' Jim Belshaw writes about what it is to be a literary historian.


• Drew Rowsome praises Dylan Jones' new biographical collection of interviews with the intimates of David Bowie.


• Peter Rukavina shares an old Guardian article from 1993, describing and showing the first webserver on Prince Edward Island.


• Seriously Science notes the potential contagiousness of parrot laughter.


• Understanding Society's Daniel Little t.com/2018/06/shakespeare-on-tyranny.htmltakes a look at the new Stephen Greenblatt book, Shakespeare on Power, about Shakespeare's perspectives on tyranny.


• Window on Eurasia shares speculation as to what might happen if relations between Russia and Kazakhstan broke down.


• Worthwhile Canadian Initiative noticed, before the election, the serious fiscal challenges facing Ontario.


• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell points out that creating a national ID database in the UK without issuing actual cards would be a nightmare.


• Arnold Zwicky reports on a strand of his Swiss family's history found in a Paris building.

• Bulgaria and Macedonia have at last signed a treaty trying to put their contentious past behind them. Greece next?


• The legacies of Stalinist deportations in Moldova continue to trouble this poor country.


• The plight of the ethnic Georgians apparently permanently displaced from Georgia has been only muted by time.

Macedonia is a poor, landlocked Balkan country of about 2 million. To the Kremlin, it's also the newest front in an ideological battle, with the U.S. fomenting regime change to counter Russia's influence. As is often the case, that view is correct to the extent that Russian interests are aligned with those of a corrupt authoritarian ruler.

[. . .]

As for Macedonia, two months after the Turkish Stream plans were broached, the opposition leader Zoran Zaev started publishing secret recordings of officials' conversations. Zaev said the recordings, made by Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski's government as part of a sweeping surveillance operation, were handed to him by a whistleblower. The frank, and sometimes coarse, conversations cover a lot of ground, from violence against political opponents and electoral fraud to the purchase of a Mercedes for Gruevski using the Interior Ministry as cover (the interior minister, who has since resigned, is heard discussing the massage function of the car's rear seats with the chief of intelligence, who has also quit in disgrace).

Macedonians were not amused, and even the country's Albanian minority, which had never made common cause with the Macedonian opposition, joined huge rallies in the capital, Skopje. Last weekend, tens of thousands of protesters turned out in the town center, which Gruevski recently decorated with kitschy neoclassical buildings and statues at a cost the tiny nation could ill afford. On Monday, the prime minister, who has been running Macedonia for almost 10 years, staged his own counter-rally. He called the intercepts "a great lesson" and denounced Zaev as a foreign puppet with a "script writer," and called on supporters to "imagine a prime minister brought to power by foreign services."

To Team Putin, this is familiar ground: Events are following the same course as in Ukraine in 2013 and 2014, when Viktor Yanukovych's corrupt regime was ousted by a popular uprising. The Kremlin believes the U.S. fomented similar revolutions in Georgia in 2003, in Ukraine in 2005 and in Moldova in 2009 and made several less successful attempts to bring down pro-Moscow regimes in former Soviet countries. Waves of regime change such as the Arab Spring also fall under Putin's definition of U.S.-engineered revolutions. The word he uses to describe them is, curiously, the same as Gruevski's description of the incriminating recordings: "a lesson" for Russia on what to avoid.

Different as they are, Ukraine has much in common with Bulgaria. Both are divided in their attitude to Russia – it’s just that in Ukraine the division is territorial, in Bulgaria philosophical. Both have been rocked by protests, although those in Ukraine ended with an explosion, those in Bulgaria with implosion. And both belong to a seemingly unhappy family – the Orthodox Slavs.

These countries of Slavia Orthodoxa (Bulgaria, Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine) top the surveys for fatigue, unhappiness, and pessimism. All have low rates of fertility and high rates of crime. Some fought recent wars – and lost them. There is no spectacular business success here. Only one, Bulgaria, was not a member of either Yugoslavia or the USSR. And only one, Bulgaria again, is an EU member. Still, Bulgaria is the poorest country in the EU and is not known for its stability.

[. . .]

First, not all Orthodox Slavs are hard-line Russophiles. Serbs and Montenegrins are, but from a distance – a luxury Belarusians do not possess. Bulgarians and Ukrainians are at least divided. There, you have many people who are culturally Russophile but politically pro-Western; it is possible to love Dostoyevsky and democracy simultaneously.

Second, not all members of Slavia Orthodoxa are anti-Western; quite the contrary. Bulgarians are more pro-Western even than some fellow EU members. Even Russians have a strong pro-Western tradition. Russian historian Alexander Yanov traces it to Kyiv and Novgorod.

Third, Eastern Christians are not by nature spoiled losers; they also can prosper and flourish. “Byzantine” is not a synonym for tyranny and obedience; it marks one of the cradles of European civilization, a continuation of Rome. Misery is caused by corrupt cliques, not by the blood in your veins or the faith in your soul. Culture is not only what you inherit, but also what you acquire. In this sense, Bulgaria, Ukraine, and Russia could be free, prosperous, and democratic

• The Burgh Diaspora's Jim Russell notes how Brazil is using the Afro-Brazilian majority legacy of the transatlantic slave trade to justify the construction of new transatlantic links with Africa.


• Crooked Timber comments upon the Irish anti-abortion laws that just cost a woman her life and the homophobia of the Reagan administration that made HIV/AIDS a laughing matter.


• Daniel Drezner wonders if the ongoing expanding Petraeus scandal will end up diminishing the American public's regard for the military.


• Eastern Approaches notes that no one in the Balkans seems to be commemorating the one hundredth anniversary of the First Balkan War.


• Far Outlier's Joel quotes from Matthew Restall's Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest to describe how Christopher Columbus was really riding on the coat-tails of Portugal's successful long-range maritime exploration.


• Geocurrents observes efforts by some Arab Christians in the Levant to revive Aramaic.


• The Global Sociology Blog reviews Laurent Dubois' Haiti: The Aftershocks of History, highlighting the extent to which Haiti's catastrophes are the products of foreign meddling.


• At Lawyers, Guns and Money, Erik Loomis maps Detroit. The extent to which the borders of the City of Detroit overlap with African-American majority populations, and to which the sprawl of Metro Detroit is constructed so as to detach the suburbs from any responsibility for the city at their region's center, is noteworthy.


• The Planetary Science Blog's Emily Lakdawalla reports on Carl Sagan's feminism.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer summarizes what's going on with Uruguay's decriminalization of marijuana for personal use.

Skopje has long needed sprucing up. But opponents of Nikola Gruevski, who have long accused the prime minister of populist nationalism, will hardly be dissauded by the nature of the construction boom (which the government has christened Skopje 2014). With an election in the offing, Mr Gruevski will no doubt enjoy taking credit for the new structures mushrooming throughout the city centre.

In Skopje’s central square a massive plinth is being built. It will soon be topped with a huge statue of Alexander the Great. Many Macedonians could not give a fig for Alexander. But they will be delighted to see the Greeks, who have been blocking Macedonia's EU and NATO integration over an objection to the country's name, turn apoplectic with rage when it is unveiled. The Greeks accuse the Macedonians of appropriating Alexander and trying to steal their Hellenic culture.

But that is just one element. Museums, domes, a new foreign ministry, a bridge bedecked with statues of lions and [. . . ] a triumphal arch are all springing up, transforming the centre of town. Some of the buildings suit the landscape, but the new constitutional court, with its massive Corinthian columns, seems a trifle overpowering.

Skopje 2014, which we first wrote about last year, has accentuated bitter disputes between the majority Orthodox Macedonians and Muslim Albanians, who make up a quarter of Macedonia's population. Whenever someone suggests building or rebuilding a church in Skopje, the Albanians demand the same for a mosque. Tensions invariably mount.

The most vivid example brought small groups of Macedonians and Albanians to fisticuffs. Recently, a church-like steel skeleton appeared on the site of an old church inside Skopje's fortress (pictured). The authorities claimed they were merely building a museum in the shape of a church. But Albanians reply that under the original church is an older Illyrian structure; as, they say, they are descended from Illyrians, the site should be theirs. Construction has now stopped, but the issue reveals the delicate balance between Macedonia's two communities, in which religion, identity, land and power are all deeply entwined.

The erection of statues of historical figures and grandiose public buildings looks like an expression of ethnic Macedonian identity. But they are not the only ones; their structures are merely the most visible to outsiders visiting Skopje's centre. Visit Albanian districts in and around the capital and you come across hundreds of new mosques.

Macedonia’s Albanians have a reputation of being much more religious than their brethren from Albania or Kosovo. Their mosque-building has even begun to alarm Albanians from Albania, where they have been labelled as "Talibans" in television chat shows.

Yet the Democratic Union for Integration, a Macedonian Albanian party, which is in coalition with Mr Gruevski, has strictly secular roots. So one wonders whether there is a sub-plot to the mosque-building frenzy. In most cases, a new mosque declares not only the glory of Islam, but that the land on which is stands is Albanian. The paradox is that you can find Albanian-controlled town halls flying American flags a stone’s throw from new mosques sporting Saudi Arabian ones from their minarets.

This is one reason why the church-museum affair is so touchy. Many Macedonians say they keep quiet about the often illegally-built mosques for the sake of social harmony. That is why it irks them that an attempt to build something that merely resembles a church becomes a huge incident. Albanians, by contrast, see Skopje 2014 and related projects like the church-museum as a project designed to shove “Macedonian-ness” down their throats.

Experts and analysts agree that the region, now comprising the newly independent nations or territories of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Kosovo, Macedonia and Montenegro, went through a "painful transition" into market economy.

It began more or less at the time when the 1991-95 wars of disintegration tore the country apart and ended a brand of relaxed socialism that had existed since the end of WW II.

Except for Slovenia, once the most developed part of former Yugoslavia and which became a member of the European Union (EU) in 2004, the economic performances of the rest are dismal when compared to 1989, a benchmark for the region.

Experts say that the processes of privatisation and transition to market economy here differed profoundly from what happened in the former East European nations after the Berlin wall fell in 1989 and that today's poverty is not a sudden event caused by recent global downturn.

"We did not see former cunning communist managers or murky international businesses being engaged in privatisation," economy analyst Misa Brkic told IPS in an interview.

"We had devastating wars, used by local elites to grab power and introduce people close to them into economy, where, as the time went by in the 90s and in this decade, they did not and could not play by market rules."

The wars left more than 120,000 people dead and economic damage worth tens of billions of dollars in devastated factories, companies, state or privately owned real estate, and in production and export losses of the former common market that collapsed.

[. . .]

Croatia and its 4.3 million people reached 69 percent of its 1989 GDP in 2003, while Serbia and its 7.3 million reached the same point only in 2009.

As for Bosnia-Herzegovina with an estimated population of 3.5 million, and its specific post-war construction of two entities, Republic of Srpska, the Serb entity, and Muslim-Croat Federation, things stand definitely worse.

Before 1991, former Yugoslavs enjoyed visa-free travel since the mid-1960s, unlike the nations of what used to be communist Eastern Europe. Generations of Serbs grew up travelling freely abroad, but the young now are almost completely unaware of the benefit.

"It was ok to go to Italy for a weekend when I was young," Bogdan Stevovic (54), a Belgrade teacher, told IPS. "However, my 19-year-old son does not know what it looks like. For a week's holiday in Greece he had to queue the whole night in front of the Greek embassy just to submit his visa request in the morning."

[. . .]

[Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Kosovo] were omitted from the EC list for visa-free travel. "These countries have not yet fulfilled the conditions," the EC said in its statement. That meant they had not introduced biometric passports, secured their borders or engaged in a fight against organised crime. Visa-free travel for them could be re-examined by mid-2010, the EC statement said.

There was fierce reaction in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where the EC move was viewed as a political message primarily for Bosniak Muslims, who are the largest ethnic group, that suffered the biggest losses in the 1992-95 war, mostly at the hands of Bosnian Serbs.

"It's further discrimination against us Bosniaks," Sarajevo resident Mirsad Juzbasic told IPS on the phone. "It's a shame after what happened here during the war. We'll remain in a kind of a ghetto."

It's different for Bosnian Croats and Serbs. Both are able to obtain passports from their ethnic mother countries, meaning they can hold dual Bosnian and Croat, or Bosnian and Serb citizenship.

Many Bosnian Croats opted for Croatian passports as far back as the mid- 1990s because Croatia was exempt from the visa introduction in 1991.

Bosnian Serbs have realised now that it's easy for them to obtain Serbian passports. "The only problem is we have to wait for Serbian citizenship for 15 months," Jelena Stojkovic (24) told IPS on phone from Banja Luka, capital of Republika Srpska, the ethnic Serb entity within Bosnia. "But it will be good for us. We can see what Europe looks like now."

Ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, who declared independence in what Serbia officially considers its southern province in February 2008, are regarded by Serbia as its citizens, but Serbia is unable to provide biometric passports because it has no jurisdiction over the province – even if the ethnic Albanians would want to travel on a Serbian passport.

According to the State Statistical Bureau, half a century ago, 20 villages in Macedonia had fewer than 50 inhabitants. Today, there are 458 villages with fewer than 20 people living in them. There are 147 village that have no residents at all.

The draining of populations began soon after World War II and lasted for several decades. Government officials and economic developers in the newly formed Peoples Federative Republic of Yugoslavia – later the Socialistic Federative Republic of Yugoslavia – devised plans to stimulate the economy. They focused their attentions on developing mining, textile, and metal industries in lucrative regions and municipalities, most of which already showed signs of urban growth.

In turn, the government ignored the needs of rural, agriculture-based villages in order to save money for investment in new sectors, free up land for industrial complexes, and encourage laborers to move to newly growing areas.

With investments sent elsewhere, many villages were cut off from civilization. The government allowed roads to degrade, communication channels to disconnect, schools and hospitals to close, and electricity to shut off. Consequently, people in the villages moved to faster-growing areas to escape low standards of living.

[. . .]

According to a paper presented to the European Association of Agricultural Economists in 2001, Macedonia’s rural population in 1948 was roughly 72 percent. By 1981, the number had dropped to 46 percent. By 1994, it had hit 40 percent.